Creative Selection: Inside Apple's Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs

by Ken Kocienda

Richard started at Apple during my second week struggling to make Mozilla do more than build, launch, and crash. On his first day, Don and I gave him a full update on everything we had done, our open source strategy, Don’s discussions with outside companies, a listing of the candidate browser source code options we had considered, our decision to focus on Mozilla, my Building the Lizard document, and the bolts-protruding-from-the-neck, crash-prone hulk of a browser produced by following those steps. Richard asked, “How long have you guys been working on this browser project?” His tone indicated that he wasn’t impressed. Don answered, “Six weeks.” Richard scrunched up his face in confusion at our lack of progress. He launched into a series of technical questions, delving into details. Was he trying to identify some valuable nugget we had missed? As we went on, it seemed Richard was too polite to ask the question really on his mind: “What on earth have you guys been doing?” Later on, when Don and I had a chance to chat by ourselves, we concluded that Richard simply didn’t understand how hard this browser project was going to be. That would soon change. We agreed that we liked our new teammate, and we could look past any gruff behavior because it was accompanied by an eagerness to get going. We’d give Richard a week or so to get his computer and office set up, then we would talk to him about the project some more. It didn’t take Richard that long to get settled in. Two days l...